13 Good Ideas from 13 Dead Copywriters

In the Babylonian sea ports, merchants hired barkers to announce the arrival of wine, spices, and fabrics.

Citizens in Greece hung “Lost” posters in hopes of being reunited with children, jewelry, or slaves.

And elaborately painted signs (billboards) sprung up throughout Pompeii to announce plays, carnivals, and races.

Surprised?

You shouldn’t be. The history of advertising is full of the tools, tactics, and strategies you — as online marketer — still use.

Let me show you why this matters.

Same as it ever was

The first printed advertisement in English was a 3-by-5 inch handbill that offered a prayer book for sale.

The year was 1477.

Shortly after that came the most sustained advertising campaign in the history of the modern world: colonizing America.

“One theme runs through all the promotions aimed at attracting investors and settlers to the New World,” writes Julian Sivulka in her book Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes. “The promise of free land.”

The word “free” ring a bell?

It holds the same persuasive power more than 300 years later.

But it wasn’t until the middle of the 1800s that advertising came into its own. As the profession evolved the positions emerged to meet the demand:

Advertising agent

Commercial illustrator

Researcher

Account executive

Copywriter

And it was the copywriter who would come to dominate the field.

Commenting on the ads of the Roaring Twenties, Sivulka says, “It was obvious that the copywriter was the most prominent member of the advertising team, since illustrations and photography seem almost interchangeable.”

Why you should care about advertising history

You should study advertising history for the same reasons you would study military history, political history, or economic history.

You’ll learn critical ideas like:

How to understand and guide the never-changing human psyche

The marketing fundamentals you forgot

Fresh publicity insights you never thought possible

Ways to make testing decisions that will save you time and money

The wrong ways to organize a campaign

Unusual copywriting tactics that still work

And straightforward, strategic thinking of proven marketing directors

All from studying the past … which, in addition, serves as a corrective to our chronological snobbery.

See, we are often seduced by data, social media, and the intrigues of Google … mistaking tools for tactics and science for strategy.

But the history of advertising will help us get our heads on straight.

So, as part of your induction to this history, I want to introduce you to 13 dead copywriters and their best ideas.

You will recognize a few names. Some you will not.

I tried to focus on the lesser-known ideas (avoiding the obvious and the abused) … and, more important, how they can apply to you today.

You’ll run into some surprises, too. Like Bill Jayme’s heretical approach to copy. Or Mel Martin’s trick to surfacing our deepest concerns. Or the videos … lots of videos to bring the ideas alive.

So here are The 13. Enjoy!

1. Decide the effect you want to produce in your reader — Robert Collier

Depending on what circles you run in — self-help or direct-mail copywriting — you’ll likely remember the name Robert Collier (1885 – 1950).

He was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and as an adult he got a gig with his uncle at his publication Collier’s Weekly. He learned how to write, edit, and research there.

But he’s probably best known for his 1926 book The Secret of the Ages.

This book sold more than 300,000 copies during his lifetime. His focus was on abundance, desire, faith, visualization, and becoming your best. He’s a legend in that field.

He’s also a legend in another:

Copywriting.

Collier sold millions of dollars worth of books — like H.G. Well’s 4-volume “Outline of History” — on the back of his copywriting. In The Robert Collier Letter Book, he shares the direct-mail letters he wrote and explains why they were successful.

What was his secret to so many successful sales letters?

Before you put pen to paper, before you ring for your stenographer, decide in your own mind what effect you want to produce on your reader — what feeling you must arouse in him.

~ Robert Collier

What emotion do you want to produce in your reader: Envy? Flattery? Pride? Any one of these 50?

Once you’ve decided upon the emotion, then write in such a way that brings that feeling to the surface.

2. Show your product in use — Victor Schwab

Victor Schwab (1898 – 1980) started out as a secretary for Maxwell Sackheim when Sackheim was at Rathrauff & Ryan’s. He did such a good job improving Sackheim’s copy that he was promoted to copywriter.

From there he went on to be “the greatest mail-order copywriter of all time.”

It has also been demonstrated that, when picturing the product in your advertisement, you will get more attention by showing it in use: doing something, accomplishing something for the reader. That, as W. S. Townsend said, “makes it live and breathe and serve right in front of the eyes of the prospect.”

My favorite example, however, of showing a product in use has to be Blendtec blenders.

3. Open like a Reader’s Digest article — John Caples

The Great Depression was hard on ad agencies. Except for those agencies that “got” advertising.

Ruthrauff & Ryan was such an agency.

Before the Depression, it was looked down on as a hard-sell mail-order shop with layouts that mimicked tabloids and boldly warned the world of sensitive issues (body odor, for example) in soap ads.

And it was inside that humble little shop that the most successful headline ever was written.

John Caples (1900 – 1990) learned and perfected results-oriented mail-order copy at Ruthrauff & Ryan. It was there that the account from the U.S. School of Music was put on his desk … a company selling a correspondence course on piano playing.

Caples believed that people yearned to look cool (and not stupid), and with his talent for getting to the point quickly, he wrote this headline:

A favorable, specific image is projected, which teases. That is why you keep reading.

4. Tap into one overwhelming desire — Eugene Schwartz

Mr. Schwartz (1927 – 1995) was not only a successful direct-mail copywriter — launching careers and corporations with headlines like “Give Me 15 Minutes and I’ll Give You a Super-Power Memory” — but he also channeled his experience and wisdom in books, including the legendary Breakthrough Advertising.

That book is a graduate-level education on direct-response copywriting. And to give you an idea of how valuable it is, the cheapest you can find it on Amazon is $95.

Tap a single overwhelming desire existing in the hearts of thousands of people who are actively seeking to satisfy it at this very moment.

~ Eugene Schwartz

It’s an important step.

Get it wrong, and even the greatest copy won’t matter.

Get it right, however, and the world will beat a path to your door.

5. Make the advertiser the character — Maxwell Sackheim

Maxwell Sackheim (1890 – 1992) was born in Kovna, Russia. In 1915 he founded a New York advertising firm with business partner Harry Scherman.

Eleven years later, he and two other associates — Mr. Scherman and Robert K. Hass — founded the Book-of-the-Month Club, which according to the New York Times was the nations’s first direct-mail book club.

This was 1926.

Sackheim eventually sold his share in the club and worked with the Brown Fence and Wire Company during the war (eventually becoming president) before returning to advertising to start his own agency.

The ad shows Mr. Davis’ awkwardness in writing a letter to sell his fish. Mr. Davis confesses he’s neither a writer nor an advertiser — he’s a plain fisherman: comfortable close-hauling a sail and picking out the best fish of a catch, but not writing a letter to sell fish. (He even questions whether what he knows about fishing can benefit him in a business way).

The letter is disarming.

You can sense an honest man showing his vulnerability. Showing his weaknesses, his ugly side.

This guy doesn’t want to make a fast buck. He just wants to make a living. And he hopes you will help him by buying some of his fish.

Omaha Steaks and Texas Ruby Red Grapefruit are current manifestations of this tactic, and across the web this technique is ubiquitous.

These days you’ll still see CEOs showing up in their advertising. Sometimes they even star in the commercials.

6. Develop a Unique Selling Proposition — Rosser Reeves

Rosser Reeves (1910 – 1984) started as a reporter in Virginia before moving to New York City. He was another advertiser who rose through the ranks during the Great Depression.

He finally joined the Bates agency in 1940.

Like David Ogilvy, Rosser Reeves was a man with many interests. He was well-read, well-traveled, and had an appetite for the best food and drink. He promoted a hard-sell approach, and, like Ogilvy, thought advertising should do one thing: Sell.

His most famous ad, however, was for Anacin, which, amazingly, promised to relieve pain, depression, and tension … fast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeas5jtffpM

He goal was to get customers to recognize a specific brand proposition.

Reeves was picking up where John E. Kennedy and Claude Hopkins left off: the no-nonsense “advertising must sell” approach.

Reeves’ Unique Selling Proposition concept focused on: “… identifying a unique and meaningful product attribute or benefit and then hammering that point repeatedly in advertising.”

No surprise he’s known as the “Prince of the Hard Sell.” (By the way, Mad Men aficionados have claimed some elements of Rosser Reeves in the character of Don Draper.)

Since then the USP has been revised and tweaked.

These days your USP doesn’t have to beat everyone else out. It just has to play nicely with the other offerings in your group. That means you can create a USP based upon the “crossroads,” a metaphor, or by making it persona-driven.

And keep in mind, restating your USP is not to be confused with simply repeating words.

7. Find the inherent drama in your product — Leo Burnett

In 1998 Time magazine named Leo Burnett (1891 – 1971) one of the 20 most influential business leaders of the 20th Century. He’s the only advertising executive named.

And his name is behind one of the world’s largest ad agencies, one he built during the Depression.

Burnett believed in finding the drama — or the story — behind your product. How do you get there?

Steep yourself in your subject, work like hell, and love, honor, and obey your hunches.

If you want to see a great example of this in action today, then watch this marketing story by Volkswagen: “Once More. The Story of VIN 903847”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP4ZUI60FlQ

8. Write to one person, not a million — Fairfax M. Cone

Fairfax M. Cone (1903 – 1977) started his career in San Francisco at Lord & Thomas in 1929. By 1939 he was managing that office, and two years later he was relocated to New York City as a vice president.

He took over the Lucky Strike cigarettes account — the largest account at Lord & Thomas. Eventually, when Albert Lasker retired, Cone and two other fellow vice presidents launched their own agency: Foote, Cone & Belding.

Those three questions can be summed up here: “Why should I buy from you at all when I understand your competition better than you do, and there’s no difference?”

Your job is to create that differentiation. You start by finding that winning difference. One way to do that is deeply understand your own unique selling proposition. (For more on the USP, see point number six above.)

10. Go after points of maximum anxiety — Mel Martin

Recently I’ve been introduced to the “greatest copywriter nobody knows.” He helped turn the publication Boardroom into a multi-million-dollar operation.

Marty Edelston, the founder and publisher of Boardroom, feared that if his writer’s name got out he’d be snatched by another company.

Well, it’s safe to share his name now. It’s Mel Martin (? – 1993).

He’s a storehouse of superb headlines:

For golfers who are almost (but not quite) satisfied with their game — and can’t figure out what’s wrong

For people who are almost (but not quite) satisfied with their cooking — and can’t figure out what’s missing

For everyone who has felt mad enough to write a letter to the New York Times

He worked slowly, and even teetered on the edge of bankruptcy because it took him so long to write an ad.

11. Transubstantiate your product into something else — Bill Jayme

At Time magazine, working in the circulation department, he wrote the unorthodox “Cool Friday” letter … a letter that opened with “Dear Reader,” and rambled on about the state of the nation before he got to the point.

That letter launched his career.

From Time he worked at CBS and McCann-Erikson before ditching the corporate life to work for himself.

Back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, publishers flew to California to beg him to write a subscription letter for their magazine. Clients included the Smithsonian (who alone mailed 280 million Jayme letters), Esquire, and Businessweek … offering him up to $40,000 per letter.

Copywriter Gary Bencivenga said of Jamye, “I don’t think anyone could match his record of control packages in the magazine field. He had such an erudite flair for capturing the essence of a magazine and making you want to be part of its magical circle.”

Why?

Jayme had a way of making friends with the reader. Of respecting that reader’s intelligence. Of always being fascinating. And selling ever so gently.

“Jayme and Ratalahti’s strong suit,” said Denny Hatch, “was starting magazines — getting inside the heads of the publisher, editor, and the readers.” (Ratalahti was Jayme’s partner and designer.)

His approach, however, was far from scientific. It was from the gut, based on intuition.

One magazine publisher said, “He defined the magazine he knew people would want to buy. My job was to produce the magazine he described.”

Question his approach all you want, but it’s hard to argue when a lineup of magazines like this owe their existence to your copy:

Bon Appetit

Cooking Light

Food & Wine

Mother Jones

New York

Worth

Jayme channeled his creativity and persuasion into his notion of transubstantiation: the idea that a product or service must be transformed into something magical.

For example, in a letter selling a course on mastery of personal computers, Jayme didn’t talk about drives, memory, software, coding, or programming. No, he focused on the deeper benefits of personal computing … the one people actually cared about:

Success.

Jayme’s letter begins:

You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. If you’re planning to succeed in business over the coming decade, you’ve now got just two choices left. You can come to terms with the computer. Or you can marry the boss’s daughter.

~ Bill Jayme

In other words, he’s not selling features or facts (which you need). He’’s selling a new life. And mastering the basics of computing are the gateway to that life.

12. Everybody in the world divides his mail into two piles — Gary Halbert

Gary Halbert (1939 – 2007) died less than seven years ago, in 2007. And direct response marketers knew they lost a legend when he died.

He cut his teeth on direct response, and stories abound about his early start, claiming he spent his utility bill money to buy stamps to send out an ad. That ad amounted to the “Coat of Arms” letter …

A 381-word marvel of human psychology.

That letter not only put Halbert on the direct marketing map … it led him up to the throne. Many have called him the Prince of Print. The King of Copy.

On the back of that letter, Gary created a business that eventually sold to Ancestery.com.

After that there came a dozen more such legendary ads. In later years he shared his marketing lessons in the Gary Halbert Letter, a print newsletter which is now online.

Among the most notable lessons that Gary brought to the direct response culture was a sense of how junk mail is sorted:

You are now about to learn the most important thing you will ever learn on the subject of direct mail. I have a similar lesson to teach you about newspaper and magazine advertising, but that will come later in another letter. Right now, we will talk only about direct mail.

Whatever. Professor Halbert is now going to give you his semi-famous “A-Pile/B-Pile Lecture.” It goes like this: Everybody in the world divides his mail into two piles which I call the A-Pile and the B-Pile. The A-Pile contains letters that are, (or appear to be), personal. The B-Pile contains everything else: Bills, catalogs, brochures, printed announcements, envelopes that obviously contain a sales message, and so on.

Now listen up: The most important thing you can ever do when creating a direct mail promotion is to make sure your letter gets in the A-Pile!

Here’s why. Everybody always opens all of their A-Pile mail and only some of their B-Pile mail.

Repeat your winners. Scores of great advertisements have been pulled before they’ve begun to payoff. Readership can actually increase with repetition — up to five repetitions.

~ David Ogilvy

It’s clear …

What Ogilvy meant when he said “creativity” was this: don’t change an ad if it is still generating revenue for change’s sake, for creativity’s sake. If it’s bringing in significant revenue six weeks from now … keep running it. Twelve months? Keep running it. Fifteen years? Keep running it.

Excuse me: where are all the women?

You probably noticed a few names missing from this list … names like Claude Hopkins, Raymond Rubicam, Bill Bernbach, and John Powers. (If you don’t know about Powers, you’ll love him when I do introduce him to you.)

Well, there’s a reason for that.

Actually, there are two.

But I can’t tell you either reason right now. It will have to wait until I’m ready.

You might have also noticed there’s not a single woman mentioned in this list.

That, too, is by design.

Not because I’m a misogynist, but because I made an incredible discovery recently about women copywriters during the 75 years prior to 1950.

And I’ll be sharing that little surprise with you, too, in a future post.

First, however, I want to take some time to offer you a series on native advertising. Which I’m thoroughly looking forward to. I hope you are, too.

Demian Farnworth

Want to graduate from the minor to the major leagues? Dominate your domain with an authorial voice that people listen to? Demian Farnworth can help you go from being a good writer to a great one. Learn more. You can also follow him on Twitter.

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Super article… can’t wait to hear what else you’re planning to share. May I add one? The late Howard Luck Gossage was funny, smart, and wonderfully grumpy. He wrote: “The real truth is… no one reads an ad. People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.” It’s expensive on Amazon, but I highly recommend picking up a collection of his thoughts and essays called The Book of Gossage.

On the subject of Gossage, I highly recommend this book — Changing the World is the Only Work For a Grown Man, by Steve Harrison (AdWorld Press). Part biography, part eulogy, it’s a more than fitting tribute to this most charismatic of ground-breaking admen.

Interesting article, Demian. Though I could tell it was one of yours from the headline, which reminds me of one of Mark Twain’s quotes:

“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your
editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”

After awhile “very” and its substitute lose their effectiveness because they are essentially meaningless words, serving no real purpose other than to obscure all your wonderful thoughts. Anyway, if you need two adjectives you’ve probably got the wrong noun. Just saying.

Please include the 14th damn good idea: “Don’t forget to ask for the order!” If you tell readers exactly what you want them to do, it substantially increases the chance they’ll do it! Hey, does this make me the 14th greatest dead copywriter? Oh, wait…

Did you purposefully break the common modern web writing rule to NEVER use $100 (big) words?

I like it, but wonder how many in this audience actually know what they mean…

Lots of great stuff here, Chief. I loved your suble bullet “how to understand the never-changing human psyche.” I did a double take as I thought you said “ever-changing human psyche” for a sec. Of course you didn’t. 🙂

Occasionally you bend those rules to make sure people are paying attention. Interestingly enough, it was Jayme who broke this rule, not wanting to insult people’s intelligence. Thanks for the kind words.

The greatest about this post is it demonstrates great storytelling combined with how-to and a clear demonstration that the author knows his stuff (pulling out all the important points of so many books).

Wonderful article – a veritable 101! I also appreciated your illustrating your theme through language – history, heresy, transubstantiation… Real value-added if you understand the references, and yet the message is clear even if you don’t. And answering objections before they’re made – very well done! An example of best practices in and of itself. Saving and sharing this one repeatedly. Looking forward to the rest.

What an amazing list! Granted some things in the marketplace have changed, but the most important thing hasn’t changed at the core: Human Beings! The emotional drivers that trigger someone to reach into their pocket have been the same for a long time, and they will continue to be for even longer into the future. Thank you for the reminder!

This is a fantastic sales seminar rather than a simple blog post. Thank you for all of this tremendous information. I’ve heard of some of these men but thank you for the videos and links to research further. I look forward to the future surprises you have in store.

“See, we are often seduced by data, social media, and the intrigues of Google … mistaking tools for tactics and science for strategy.”

Which is why in this “never-changing” world, I’m glad to have bet on words and storycraft. Both have served me well no matter my official job title.

I, too, knew that this was “one of yours,” Demian, before I clicked through my email to Copyblogger. “Another DAMN post by Farnworth,” I was thinking. 🙂

Reading your introduction, I thought I could guess one of the entries given our shared Southern(most) Illinois heritage. But nope, I was wrong.

You see my first memories of cruising bluff-lands come from riding shotgun in my Grandpa’s powder-blue Impala listening to the few stations the antennae could pull into the AM dial. My grandpa was the son of a preacher, the descendant of a long line of farmers, as well as a charming old-school salesman. He was also obviously of mixed racial ancestry which was illegal at that time in our history.

So how did he survive…no, thrive in those conditions?

“And now for the rest of the story…”

Needless to say, my politics are more than slightly to the left of radio personality & copywriter, Paul Harvey’s, but I appreciate his skills, results, and longevity.

The fact that my grandfather could mimic Harvey’s tone and ways made it much easier for folks to turn a color-blind eye.

My childhood lesson was that you don’t have to agree with everything about a person in order to appreciate their God-given talents.

I LOVE these longer pieces! They feel so luxurious. Great series. Can’t wait for more.

I left a comment earlier and it’s not here for some reason 🙁 Maybe I got distracted and didn’t publish it. So, I had to say again how much I loved this post! It was like a sales seminar not just a blog…so much tremendous info. I just read the Ogilvy piece and took notes. There is so much here I could be busy for hours reading and watching how to sell. Thank you, Demian!!

Wow, excellent post. It awakened some lessons learned in college, where I chose art direction over copywriting, thus breezed through one copy course. I kept glancing over to my bookshelf where “Ogilvy on Advertising” has rested for the last decade. It’s calling me. I think I am high on words, the science of selling and the art of the well crafted verbiage. I think I could live for days, maybe weeks, on the resources linked in this post. Sweet.

Demian, wow! What an awesome post this is. Well-researched, fact-packed and very informative for all bloggers, writers and copywriters today. Although the world has changed greatly today, still, these ideas have a punch in them. A lot of them still makes a lot of sense and they just can’t be ignored. While I’m still figuring out how to put to practice what I’ve just read, I also can’t help feel astounded by these great copywriters and how they came up with such solid ideas back then.

I love your advices and articles. I read copyblogger for very long time…
Even though I am more writer than copywriter, I don’t like copywriting very much and I am not good at it… So my current challenge, to write about doors (more precisly about the “pocket” you shuffle door into…) is, well, overhelming :)) Gonna read everything you ever wrote, maybe it help! 🙂

Yes, sometimes, the “dead dudes” are those that stays alive long enough to outlive all others who are living, one aspect i love here is the “article title”! Talk bout having a grabbing headlines, everyone wants to know what it is about!

wow i love the bit about “anticipation copy” Its a concept that is new to me.. i know. i might have to get out more.
But its going to be my research for the next week/month..
perfect that..or at least a good approximation.. and i think it will help to boost my business

I really liked the one on “Why you should care about advertising history”, because it will tell you about future of your advertising and business, and everyone should consider this! Thanks for all the 13 nice ideas 🙂

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